What is lasting? Thoughts on a Wednesday

      Barriers that separate room from room, baskets, bed sheets, and bookcases, all get miserably old. If anything in a room remains, it must be the nails. Though everything else may burn to ashes, nails often survive the worst of fatalities that walls holding them encounter. However, even the thickest of nails grow weak and old with time; just like humans. That said, the metaphysical of a room must linger. Ruminate the thought of books. Surly they can tear, they can burn easily and only the morsel remnants of words are what remain. But the ideas or beliefs each book carries, has already taken stance in other homes or libraries. I once found a Bible on the side of the road in Thailand where the front page read, “Paper no good for cigarettes.” The writer of the note obviously tore out pages to test this. And although that particular Bible had been used for ulterior motives, there are millions of other copies and a multitude of individuals that believe the words on those pages still stand, regardless of whether the paper is good for rolling herbs or not.

       So I ask you this, what is lasting? Walls will burn, shoes will wear, bodies will pass, clothes will go out of style, and electronics will be upgraded. What lasts? "Imperishable things drift through the air, mixed with what is passing, it's someone's job to sort them out" (Adam Zagajewski, A Defense of Ardor: Essays).